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Visiting Scholars

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  • 2024
    Laura Cecilio

    Laura Cecilio (she/her)

    Laura Cecilio is a Brazilian Performer and PhD student from the Communication and Semiotics Program at the Catholic Pontifical University of Sao Paulo (PUC-SP). She is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Riverside in the Music Department, under the guidance of professor Dr. Walter Clark. Cecilio has been awarded a CAPES Foundation scholarship to research her doctoral investigation, titled "Networks of Resistance and their Micro-political Narratives," initiated in 2021, and endeavors to illuminate the expressive potential of queer existence through fictional narratives interwoven with performative arts, primarily encompassing Brazilian music, dance, and literary forms. She is keen on delving into the potential of collaboratively constructed creative processes. As a manifestation of this interest, she conceived the musical noise project "Ficções" as a live exercise in the fabulation process.

    Cecilio is also a performer/singer in different projects such as “Soturna” (Burlesque Jazz music) “Manati Peixe-Banda” (Brazilian Progressive Psychedelic music) and “A Drama” (Nova Música Popular Brasileira). 

    CV
    lauramcecilio@gmail.com / lcecilio@ucr.edu 

    Ladislao Ceja Fernández

    Ladislao Ceja Fernández

    Ladislao Ceja Fernández earned his degree in cello at the Veracruz Institute of Music. He completed his master's degree at the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas with research in the indigenous community of Chamula, Chiapas, on the importance of festivities such as the local carnival in the construction of hybrid cultural identities. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of Oviedo, Spain, writing a thesis that investigates the main music festivals of the second half of the 20th century in his hometown of Morelia, Michoacán (UNESCO Cultural Heritage since 1991).

    Dra. Inmaculada Matía Polo

    Dra. Inmaculada Matía Polo

    Vice Dean of International, Institutional Relations and Library of the Faculty of Geography and History (UCM) and Professor of Musicology at the Complutense University of Madrid.

    Professor in the Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Geography and History (UCM), she has taught at different Spanish and international universities, highlighted by her connection with the Federal University of Ceará (UFCA, Brazil) since 2012. Between 2011 and 2016, she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Sociedad Española de Musicología and, within this space, she is a founding member of the working groups Musical Archaeology, Music and Press, and Music and Performing Arts, a commission that she chairs. She has participated in a hundred conferences, collaborated in international projects linked to dance and the popular scene, and is the author of more than 40 articles and book chapters, inserted in high-impact magazines and editorials, as well as six books published under her editorial coordination. Among these texts, the book José Inzenga: la diversidad de acción de un músico español en el siglo XIX (SEdeM, 2010) stands out, derived from her candidacy for the 2009 Annual Musicology Prize, as well as, more recently, the monographs Copla, ideología y poder (Dykinson, 2020), Entre copla y flamenco(s): Escenas, diálogos e intercambios (Dykinson, 2021), Detrás de la imagen: cine, canción y baile en España (1931-1939) (Ediciones Complutense, 2021) , América como horizonte: intercambios, diálogos y mestizajes de la escena popular española (Iberoamericana-Vervuet, 2023) o Cuplé y canción española. Escenarios de representación (Dykinson, 2024). Since 2022, she has been Vice Dean of International and Institutional Relations and Library of the Faculty of Geography and History (UCM).

    In her work as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Riverside, she has reviewed documentation linked to the image of Spanish in the United States and Latin America, particularly referring to the actions carried out by Encarnación López Júlvez's companies “La Argentinita” and Tórtola Valencia on the stages of the city of Los Angeles during the first half of the 20th century. Likewise, she has had the opportunity to analyze the collaboration of the dancer José Greco with the film industry, through the films Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Holiday for Lovers (1959), Ship of fools (1965), and The Proud and Damned (1972).

    Daniel Martín Sáez

    Daniel Martín Sáez

    Daniel Martín Sáez is professor of the Degree in History and Sciences of Music and the Master in Hispanic Music at the University of Salamanca. His lines of research are characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, which aims to open new lines of research in musicology by integrating it with disciplines such as philosophy, history of poetics, aesthetics, the history of theology, history of law, history of the press, gender studies, and the history of science, while paying special attention to the history of ideas and geopolitical problems. He is currently collaborating with several projects and research groups and is developing a line of research on the theological, legal, and medical debates surrounding the castration of singers, the first result of which was the article "El jurista Giulio Capone, el cantante Ottavio Gaudioso y la defensa filosófica de la castración con fines musicales" (2022). That same year he published his article "Si las mujeres mandasen. Zarzuela, prensa y feminismo en España en la primera mitad del siglo XX" (2022). 

    A part of his studies is focused on the history of opera and the philosophy of contemporary music, which he has combined with teaching appointments in musicology, philosophy, and history at various universities, including the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Granada, and the University of Oviedo, as well as the University of Salamanca. He has also carried out research stays at Princeton University and the University of Ferrara, and he has been a visiting professor at the University of Padua and the Complutense University of Madrid, among others. 

    This diversity of interests has its origin in his early university education. After graduating in philosophy and musicology, he defended his doctoral thesis at the Autonomous University of Madrid on the birth of opera, in which he addressed the connection of opera with the political, religious, and academic history of the early-modern era. His publications in this field include the chapter "Galileo and Opera: Music, Science, Politics and Religion in the 17th Century" in the book Music and Science from Leonardo to Galileo (Brepols, Turnhout, 2022), edited by Rudolf Rasch, which analyzes a dozen operas connected with the Galileo affair, coinciding in time with his great cosmological discoveries, his disputes with the Jesuits about comets, and the inquisitorial process that ended up condemning him to house arrest. His articles on the metaphor of the theatrum mundi, on the history of Italian opera in Poland, on the genealogy of the concept of Baroque, and on the librettist Gabriello Chiabrera also stand out in this field. Research such as this earned him a fellowship from the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music in 2018. 

    He has also devoted special attention to the figure of the castrated singer Carlo Broschi Farinelli, to whom he has dedicated several articles and lectures at numerous international congresses. His publications include "La leyenda de Farinelli en España: Historiografía, mitología y política" (2018), which received the I Premio de la Sociedad Española de Estudios del Siglo XVIII, and "La apoteosis de Farinelli en España. El mito de la superestrella a través de la prensa británica del siglo XVIII" (2019), which received the Otto Mayer Serra Award from the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music at UCR. He has subsequently published other articles, such as "La amistad entre Carlo Broschi Farinelli y el marqués de la Ensenada a través de la diplomacia europea, la iconografía, la propaganda, la historia y la literatura" (2020) and "Calendario festivo, fuentes y artistas de las óperas y serenatas organizadas por Farinelli para la corte de Fernando VI y Bárbara de Braganza" (2021). On melodramatic poetics, his articles "La poética melodramática del Seicento: más allá del mito de la camerata del conde Bardi" (2021) and "El lugar de la ópera en la poética de Ignacio de Luzán: entre la tragedia y las artes liberales" (2022) stand out. 

    In addition, he has published an article on the history of the term opera, entitled "Origins and Consolidation of the Term 'Opera.' From Italy to Germany, England, France and Spain" (2022), and another on the historiographical treatment of the birth of opera, entitled "Estética, musicología y secularización: el mito del nacimiento de la ópera en la historiografía del último siglo" (2020). On contemporary music philosophy, his latest article is "The Expression 'Philosophy of Music'. A Brief History and Some Philosophical Considerations" (2021), in which e he analyzes the historical origin of the philosophy of music and criticizes some of its philosophical-musical presuppositions. 

    In other articles he has criticized the musical ideas of authors such as Theodor Adorno and Peter Kivy, as in his article "La idea de ópera de Peter Kivy. El caballo de Troya del formalismo" (2019) and in "La crisis de la ópera en la obra de Theodor Adorno. Historia y crítica de un tópico infundado" (2021). He has also stood out for his work as editor and translator, including his edition, translation, and foreword to James O. Young's book Filosofía de la música. Respuestas a Peter Kivy (2017), and the co-translation of Eva Brann's The Music of the Republic (2015). In addition, since 2006 he has edited more than forty-five issues of Sinfonía Virtual. Revista de Música, and has been a reviewer for numerous impact journals in music, philosophy, and history.